Exit Art Gallery

Exit Artis an intimate portrait of an institution that from 1982 to 2012 challenged social, political, aesthetic and curatorial norms. Committed to experimenting at the intersection of disciplines, publications and design, the gallery Exit Art remained steadfast in its mission to provide new possibilities and opportunities for artists, curators and viewers through its expansive historical shows, exhibitions of emerging and under-recognized artists, experimental theater and performance works, as well as national and international film and video programs. Artists who exhibited at Exit Art include Chakaia Booker, Jimmie Durham, Nicole Eisenman, Jane Hammond, David Hammons, Tehching Hsieh, Julie Mehretu, Shirin Neshat, Roxy Paine, Adrian Piper, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Fred Tomaselli, Cecilia Vicuña, Krzysztof Wodiczko, David Wojnarowicz and Martin Wong. "Something disruptive and transformative happened to art in New York in the early 1980s," writes Holland Cotter. "What exactly that something was has yet to be identified, but it involved a chemical reaction between a new political conservatism and a nascent multiculturalism ... One thing is certain: however the historical picture gets sorted out, Exit Art will figure into it." Conceived by Exit Art's founders, Papo Colo and the late Jeanette Ingberman, this volume is a resource on more than 200 exhibitions, events, festivals and programs featuring more than 2,500 artists, presented within the larger context of the art world. More than 70 eyewitness accounts and idiosyncratic recollections from artists, curators, critics and friends create a vivid sense of the exhibitions, performances, screenings, discussions, ideas and people that were part of Exit Art during its three-decade run.

Founded in 1982 by Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, Exit Art was an interdisciplinary cultural center that presented innovative exhibitions, films and performances that reflected a commitment to contemporary issues and ideas. It supported emerging, under-recognized, mid-career and international artists, emphasizing new and experimental forms of expression, and was interested in art that explored environmental, political and cultural issues as a means of initiating or instigating social change. The diversity of Exit Art's programmes reflected the multiplicity of its audience, which included artists, activists, scholars, scientists, students, cultural critics, educators, collectors, and the New York community at large. After thirty years, the gallery closed at the end of May 2012, and Exit Art 's extensive archives have been transferred to the Downtown Collection at Fales Library & Special Collections at New York University, where they are currently being processed, and will eventually be available to scholars and students for research. Steidl publishes this final document of Exit Art on the occasion of the closing of the gallery. It is directed at the preservation of the work of Exit Art and will illustrate in text and images--many published here for the first time--the history of Exit Art exhibitions and events. It is hoped that it will provide a scholarly resource focused on experimental American artworks linked to the creative, social, and political dimensions of American culture. This major monograph will serve as a lasting record of the unique collaborative achievement of Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo in the creation of Exit Art.

A groundbreaking history of pioneering alternative art venues in New York where artists experimented, exhibited, and performed outside the white cube and the commercial mainstream. This groundbreaking book—part exhibition catalogue, part cultural history—chronicles alternative art spaces in New York City since the 1960s. Developed from an exhibition of the same name at Exit Art, Alternative Histories documents more than 130 alternative spaces, groups, and projects, and the significant contributions these organizations have made to the aesthetic and social fabric of New York City. Alternative art spaces offer sites for experimentation for artists to innovate, perform, and exhibit outside the commercial gallery-and-museum circuit. In New York City, the development of alternative spaces was almost synonymous with the rise of the contemporary art scene. Beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was within a network of alternative sites—including 112 Greene Street, The Kitchen, P.S.1, FOOD, and many others—that the work of young artists like Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, David Wojnarowicz, David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Martin Wong, Jimmie Durham, and dozens of other now familiar names first circulated. Through interviews, photographs, essays, and archival material, Alternative Histories tells the story of such famous sites and organizations as Judson Memorial Church, Anthology Film Archives, A.I.R. Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Franklin Furnace, and Eyebeam, as well as many less well-known sites and organizations. Essays by the exhibition curators and scholars, and excerpts of interviews with alternative space founders and staff, provide cultural and historical context. Contributors Jacki Apple, Papo Colo, Jeanette Ingberman, Melissa Rachleff, Lauren Rosati, Mary Anne Staniszewski, Herb Tam Interviewees Steve Cannon, Rhys Chatham, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters, Carol Goodden, Alanna Heiss, Bob Lee, Joe Lewis, Inverna Lockpez, Ann Philbin, Anne Sherwood Pundyk and Karen Yama, Irving Sandler, Adam Simon, Martha Wilson

"A Floating Chinaman is, in the broadest sense, a book about who gets to speak for China. The title is taken from a lost manuscript by H.T. Tsiang, an eccentric Chinese immigrant writer who self-published a series of visionary novels in the 1930s, a time when China was recast as a rich, unexplored mystery to the American public. At this time the United States "rediscovered" China, and the book traces its causes and cues in a variety of sites: the comfortable, middlebrow literature of Pearl Buck, Alice Tisdale Hobart and Lin Yutang; the journalism of Carl Crow and Henry Luce; exuberant reports from oil executives proclaiming a new era in global trade. On the margins--in Chinatowns, on college campuses, in the failed avant-gardism of Tsiang--a different conversation about the possibilities of a transpacific future was taking place. The book is about the circulation of ideas about China; but it is also a book about writers, rivalries, and the acquisition of authority. It is about the creation and refinement of those ideas, as well as the spirit of competition that underlies all critical endeavors. These were decades when China represented a new area of inquiry, and the stakes for writers to flex their expertise were at once intellectual, professional, and deeply personal. The author considers a range of texts--from best-sellers to self-published paperbacks, travel literature to corporate newsletters, FBI surveillance files to flowery letters from an Ellis Island detention center--and considers the competing notions of a transpacific future that animated the literary imagination as well as some satisfying moments of revenge."--Provided by publisher.

A catalog of an exhibition that surveys the history of international graffiti and street art.